Merciful
by Drusilla2
Summary: Spike's POV. "I killed her that night, and every night after that." Spike/Buffy.


TITLE: Merciful  
  
AUTHOR: Drusilla  
  
EMAIL: spikes_pet@ottawa.com or jenny_bean47@hotmail.com  
  
DISCLAIMER: Neither Spike, Buffy, Willow, Xander nor any of the Slayerettes are mine.  
  
SPOILERS: Once More, With Feeling  
  
DISTRIBUTION: Black Roses and FanFiction.net  
  
SUMMARY: "I killed her that night, and every night after that."  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is very, very, dark.  
  
  
  
Merciful  
  
* * *  
  
  
Her footsteps tread softly across the barren ground as she made her way through the crypt, echoing across the room, over the walls, and I waited.   
  
Her scent was somehow different, yet the ingredients remained the same. Always lavender, always vanilla. Always beauty and always death. The world was too harsh for her, she said, too jagged, too bright.  
  
And the truth was, too real.  
  
She came to me with clouded eyes, her tears cold and face hard. From me she looked for her comfort, I knew, and this I could not deny her. She never said the words, nor made the motions, but her eyes pleaded unknowingly, and her flesh cringed at affection.  
  
She neither screamed nor gasped when I complied, because none of this was new, none of this held meaning. Internally I cursed Angelus for being her first, her only, for spoiling my triumph. My rage I took upon her flesh, although she made no complaint as I pressed her fragile form to the wall and kissed her unfeeling heat until it blossomed with blood.  
  
I killed her that night, and every night after that.  
  
Afterwards, I stood shocked, holding her body against mine for assurance until my eyes knew nothing except pain and blood and our embrace lost all evidence of fire. Before the dawn, I took her to the earth beside her mother's grave and buried her there, fashioning a wooden cross from old lumber as a headstone, though my fingers grew black and crisp like charcoal.  
  
And when I returned to my crypt, I slept, and she called to me.  
  
She came back the second night, and found me in the corner store "buying" smokes. Her hair was shorter, and her eyes dark instead of green, but she smiled at me and we talked, and I hated her.  
  
She kissed me, and we went outside, and I ripped her throat out.  
  
I left her body beneath the steps of an abandoned house, satisfied with my precious work. Later, I would realize this to be my gravest of all mistakes.  
  
The third night she was sitting in a fancy black car, all shiny and new, locking lips with some guy I'd never seen before, and surely she hadn't known. Furious, I leapt between them, knocking the bloke out with one blow and dragging her back to the crypt.  
  
Was I not kind? Was I not merciful? I asked. Did she not give thanks?  
  
But she simply hung her head, strapped to the wall with chains, unheeding.  
  
Every night I killed her, and every night, a different method. I tried to be creative, thoughtful. The first years it was always quick, always inventive.   
  
And she came back night after night, sometimes seeking me, sometimes sought. She would always be a little different. Her hair a lighter shade, her figure thinner, fatter, fuller. But she was always beautiful, golden, her scent deadly and her game seduction.  
  
I killed her five hundred and seventy-three times, and she never went away.  
  
I decided, then, that it must have been the Scoobs.  
  
I went after them, too. The witches first, and then the whelp and his girl, and then the watcher. The Lil Bit I left alone, she would never have any part in this, she would never allow it.   
  
I hated them so, but I could not see them suffer. They were the Slayer's friends once upon a time, and they had to be put down gently, like good old dogs. I remember their faces as the knife splattered with blood, and it still haunts me.  
  
Not as much as Buffy does, of course.  
  
"Please," she would plead, and I would look at her sadly because I could never save her. I tried and I tried, but what good did it do? I held her in my arms while she insisted that she knew of no one named Buffy, or Willow, or Xander, and I cried with her in her denial.  
  
Screw her! Screw all of them. And there was nothing I could do. I hated her, and I hated them, and I loved them all the same. Their souls never made it to heaven, perhaps.   
  
(For every problem there is a solution.)  
  
I fed them little white pills that would keep them unconscious and ran the heated blade over their flesh, quickly, intricately.  
  
Slash, slash, slash.  
  
When there was no more flesh to remove, and I was sure that their hearts no longer beat, I took the bloodied pieces of them and burned them to ash.  
  
(A jigsaw, a puzzle-knot.)  
  
When they pleaded, or whimpered, I carved out their mouths, or their eyes, whichever one I felt suitable for punishment. And they cried as the blood of the others seeped closer and closer to their own bodies, marking out a distinct river of red.  
  
I carved her face into shreds and I cut her body to pieces, so they could not resurrect her. I buried her beneath streams, beneath the church, wherever I could think of, wherever my nails could dig. I sat on the earth above her until the sun began to throw shadows upon the land and I was forced to retreat to the darkness. I dug her up again the second night, to make sure that her body was untouched.  
  
Sometimes, when I sat awatch, I would dream of her. My memories were always loving, and perhaps false even, but I did not care. I knew only that my angel wanted this, wanted me to do this, and I failed her every time. And then I would grow mad, and I would curse, and I would want to kill her over again.  
  
And I would, of course.  
  
Tonight I am sitting in the mall, waiting for her to find me. 1700th night, I think. Perhaps this is the lucky number. But then, I think that every night, and it never is.   
  
I'm at a table in the food court, tapping my fingers gently on the blue-plastic table covering. It's late, and most of the shops have closed, but I know that if I wait here like a good little boy, she'll find me.  
  
She's late.   
  
Nevermind, there's work to be done, and I sigh.   
  
But then she appears, like she always does, as though from thin air. I clutch the iron of the chair tightly because she has never looked so beautiful and so sad, not since that lonely day in my crypt when she first came to me. As she draws near, I stand and approach her, and whisper the two syllables of her name with closed eyes and hushed breath.  
  
She looks at me, surprised, and turns the other way.  
  
Damn her! Damn her for rejecting me like she always does. I hate her with love and I cannot stay away. My fingers tug at her arm and she frowns at me angrily. "Don't touch me." She says, and I can imagine her saying those words with utter contempt so many years ago, when things were much simpler.  
  
I let go of her a little, but not completely. My fingers are shaking. I am tired. I am broken.  
  
"Are you alright?"   
  
Yes. No. I am a puppet.  
  
I am nothing without her.  
  
(I love you so much I have to leave you.)  
  
My fingers loosen the soft fabrics of her sleeve and I surprise even myself. This is the first time, I marvel. My first time.  
  
I let her go alive.  
  
  
* * *  
(end)  
  
* * * 


End file.
